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This thread is so full of win

I just had one of the GREATEST conversations with a good friend of mine. I wore my AGD hat to work today and he came up to me saw my hat, his eyes lit up and he says "Airgun Designs... wow, that takes me back"

"I thought you didnt play paintball"

"I don't but Tom and I go waaaaay back"

"Are you serious, I talk to him every once and a while"

"That's great, give him some crap for me"

"Anything in specific"

"Yea, give him crap about the machines he used to build that put coupons in coffee cans. That'll get him going"

From what I gather durring the initial creation of agd eric was brought in to help with figureing out air flow inside of the guns. I plan on having further conversations on this topic but I do like the coffee thing best

Ok so about the coupons. If you have ever gotten a promo coupon inside a package, about 99% chance my machine put it there.

In 1990 a woman came through our door. She sold promotional coupon programs that included the machine to insert the coupons in the assembly line. The guy she was working with for 20 years went independent and took his patented machine with him. She needed someone to not only make a machine, but get around the patents and make it work better.

We partnered up and I designed and built the first coupon machine that worked with belt fed coupons. Prior to that they used coupons in a stack like a deck of cards and had to replace the stack all the time. My roll system would run the whole shift without refills. The machine itself used servo motors on two sets of rollers to feed the belt, detect the end of the coupon, then tear the last coupon loose from the strip at the perforation and shoot it into the box while it moved past on the line.

We got a patent but she was sales oriented and I was all engineering so we didn't see eye to eye. I had her buy me out and we went our separate ways. A couple years later she sold 15 million dollars worth of the machines to Kraft and the other major food packagers. She put her old partner out of business and came to dominate the industry.

Years later I went to visit her factory and talked with her engineering guys. They were unusually friendly showing me their 3rd gen STEPPER MOTOR controlled top of the line coupon inserter. Then they showed me their 'super' model under development, it used SERVO motors.... They told me they found an old box of stuff and when they opened it, there was my original unit with servos. They were absolutely STUNNED that I had started with the super performance stuff that they had taken years to build up too. They were being friendly out of respect (which I certainly appreciated).

I have made two major mistakes in my life, one was not patenting compressed air PB guns, the other was not keeping a piece of the coupon insterter.